The modal logic of copy and remove

We propose a logic with the dynamic modal operators copy and remove. The copy operator replicates a given model, and the remove operator removes paths in a given model. We show that the product update by an action model in dynamic epistemic logic decomposes in copy and remove operations, when we consider action models with Boolean preconditions and no post-condition. We also show that copy and remove operators with paths of length 1 can be expressed by action models with post-conditions. We investigate the expressive power of the logic with copy and remove operations, together with the complexity of the satisfiability problem of some of its syntactic fragments. (C) 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.